Abstract
Self-determination, whether external or internal, is not an issue that has been the focus of much open debate in Central Asia.1 Tentative moves to explore the question in the early twentieth century were quashed once Soviet rule had been established. Thereafter, the matter was excised from the public domain by the use of two complementary strategies: deception and fear. The deception lay in the construction of a system that pre-empted demands for self-determination by creating the illusion (supported by an impressive panoply of institutions and symbols) that this had already been achieved: that the administrative units that were formed as a result of the Soviet National Delimitation of Central Asia of 1924 were independent states that had voluntarily chosen to join the Union, in which they had equal status with all other members, and from which they could secede if and when they so desired. The fear, which was created and maintained by the arbitrary use of extreme sanctions on a mass scale, over many decades, deterred people from thinking, let alone speaking or writing, about ideas that ran counter to the state’s fiat. Sixty-odd years later, however, when the power of the “centre” was waning, education, better communications and greater self-confidence combined to create a climate in which Central Asians’ thoughts began to turn again to the possibility (though a possibility that was still perceived as something very distant) of making “a free, genuine, informed and voluntary choice” with regard to their political status. Yet, once more, they were deprived of the opportunity to give coherent shape to such aspirations, this time by the sudden and unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union. Independence was thrust upon them before they had opted for it and certainly before they were ready for it. As before, they were confronted with a fait accompli which determined their futures, but in which they had played no decisive role.
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Notes
“Central Asia” has no precise definition. However, since January 1993 the five former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have adopted this term as the collective regional designation for the territory they encompass. It is used in this sense here. For a history of the term and its usage, see M. Yapp, “Tradition and Change in Central Asia”, in S. Akiner (ed.), Political and Economic Trends in Central Asia [hereinafter, Political Trends] (London: Academic Press, 1994), at 1–10.
An outline of the various uses of the term is given in E. Tonkin, M. McDonald and M. Chapman (eds), History and Ethnicity, ASA Monographs (London and New York: Routlege, 1989), at 11–17; R. Just, “Triumph of the Ethnos”, Ibid., at 72–9, is also illuminating.
E. Allworth, “A Theory of Soviet Nationality Policies”, in H. R. Huttenbach (ed.), Soviet Nationality Policies: Ruling Ethnic Groups (London: Mansell, 1990), at 24–46, draws attention to the semantic confusion surrounding the various ethno-socio-political terms used in Soviet sources with reference to “nationality” questions. The analysis (at 35–8) of the range of nationality policies, from the positive steps that were initiated to establish or revive some groups, to the disintegrative actions directed at others, is clear and concise.
The most comprehensive study in English of the pre-modern history of the region is D. Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). See also F. H. Skrine and E. Denison Ross, The Heart of Asia: A History of Russian Turkestan and the Central Asian Khanates from the Earliest Times (London: Methuen, 1899); despite its age and occasional inaccuracies, this account remains one of the liveliest and most readable works on the subject.
Detailed diachronic and synchronic descriptions of these Turkic languages are to be found in J. Deny et al. (eds), Philologicae Turcicae Fundamenta, vol. 1 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1959); see also V. V. Radlov, Opyt Slovaria Tiurkskikh Narechii (St Petersburg, 1893–1911).
E. Schuyler, Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan.… (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1876), is one of several Western travellers who describe the various ethnic groups in some detail.
There are a number of well-documented historical ethnographic studies by Soviet scholars; the encyclopaedic Narody Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana, main ed. S. P. Tolstov, 2 vols (Moscow: AN USSR, 1962–3), gives a comprehensive overview of research on the subject. The hierarchical relationships of the various tribal and sub-tribal groupings are described in some detail. For an explanation of the use of the term klan (“clan”), see vol. 2, at 171.
The author encountered this usage of the term musulmon in country areas even in the 1980s and 1990s. For a description of musulmon kuinak (also known as mullocha kuinak “mullah’s shirt”) see N. P. Lobacheva, “‘O nekotorikh chertakh regional’ noi obshchnosti v traditsionnom kostiume narodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana”, in N. P. Lobacheva and M. V. Sasonova (eds), Traditsionnaya odezhda narodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), at 18.
After the Russian conquest of Central Asia, several of the learned societies of St Petersburg and Moscow established branches in Turkestan, including in 1870 the Moscow Society of Amateurs of the Natural Sciences, Anthropology and Ethnography, in 1890 the Society of Oriental Studies, and in 1897 the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. The Turkestan Statistical Committee, founded in 1868, was another valuable source of information, as was the census survey of 1897. See further I. M. Muminov, Istoriia Uzbekskoi SSR (Tashkent: Fan, 1974), at 196–200; also Aziatskaia Rossiia, vol. 1, Izdanie pereselencheskie upravlenie glavnogo upravleniia zemleustroistva i zemledeliia (St Petersburg, 1914).
For a break-down of the ethnic composition of the Central Asian republics as recorded in the All-Union census surveys of 1926, 1959, 1970 and 1979 see the relevant entries in S. Akiner, Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union, 2nd edn (London: Kegan Paul International, 1986).
The views expounded by A. Bennigsen, “Islamic, or Local Consciousness Among Soviet Nationalities?”, in Henry R. Huttenbach (ed.), Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), at 168–82, are representative of the position held by many Western (and emigré Central Asian) scholars. The Soviet position is summed up by T. Zhdanko in I. R. Grigulevich and S. Ya. Kozlov (eds), Ethnocultural Processes and National Problems in the Modern World (Moscow: Progress, 1981). A. Hetmanek, “Aesop and the Turkistanian Idea”, in Erling von Mende (ed.), Turkestan als historischer Faktor und politische Idee (Cologne: Studien, 1988), at 59–80, argues the case for a Turkistani national consciousness.
For an explanation of the Marxist-Leninist “theory of the nation” see G. Starushenko, The Principle of National Self Determination in Soviet Foreign Policy (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, undated), especially at 13–32.
The rise of “linguistic nationalism” and the role played by Herder, Fichte and others in defining the linkage between language and nation is explored by, among others, E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), at 102–11; A. D. Smith, The Ethnic Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), at 45–52; R. Emerson, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), at 132–48.
As E. J. Hobsbawm points out, national languages are almost always semi-artificial constructs (op. cit. supra, note 17, at 54). A theoretical overview of language planning policies in the Soviet Union is given in M. Kirkwood (ed.), Language Planning in the Soviet Union (London: Macmillan, 1989); for a case study of Uzbekistan, see S. Akiner, supra, note 1, at 100–22.
The “ideologization of identity”, using such tools as the standardization of language, the creation of a new body of literature and the reformulation of history, is by no means a unique phenomenon: usually, however, it is associated with the rise of the middle class (Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Wisconsin and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), at 45–66), whereas in Central Asia, it was the Soviet state that played the role of “cultural broker”.
Soviet estimates set the level of literacy achieved in Uzbekistan by 1932 at 52.5 per cent, by 1939 at 67.8 per cent; E. Allworth, Uzbek Literary Politics (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), at 190, finds the literacy curve for the early 1930s “unbelievably steep”, but accepts the 1939 estimate; W. K. Medlin, W. M. Cave and F. Carpenter, Education and Development in Central Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1971), at 108, are dubious about both claims. D. Azimova, Youth and the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Central Asian Republics (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), at 39, makes the even more extravagant claim that by 1941 the literacy rate had reached 95 per cent: this implies a very rudimentary definition of literacy or possibly a not very rigorous system of data collection. However, by the 1970s, after four decades of compulsory education for children and intensive efforts in the field of adult education, it is probable that close on universal literacy was achieved. This was certainly the impression gained by a research team, organised by the Institute of Education, University of London, who visited a number of educational establishments in Uzbekistan in 1987. Foreign employers and international aid and development agencies that have been working in Central Asia since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 appear to agree with this assessment.
G. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), emphasizes the political aspects of the emancipation campaign.
See E. G. Filimonov (main ed.), Islam v SSSR: Osobennosti protsessa sekuliarizatsii v respublikakh sovetskogo vostoka (Moscow: Mysl, 1983), for a triumphalist account of the success of the anti-Islamic campaign. It is interesting for the linkages it makes between religion and nationalism, also between Soviet ideology and modernisation. Of Western scholars, A. Bennigsen and C. Lemercier-Quelquejay have been the most prolific authors on the subject. Their most comprehensive study is Islam in the Soviet Union (London: Pall Mall, 1967). More recent works have tended towards sensationalist predictions about the rise of fundamentalism; for the most part they are based on very scanty knowledge of the region. “Uzbekistan: the hostile earth …” by S. Akiner in Index on Censorship (January 1990), at 27–9, gives an account of the situation in the late 1980s as observed in the course of several research trips in 1985–90.
See M. McCauley, “Agriculture in Central Asia and Kazakhstan in the 1980’s”, in Political Trends, supra, note 1, at 90–101, for an account of some of these malpractices. The most senior Moscow official to be implicated in the “Uzbek affair” was Brezhnev’s son-in-law, General Yuri Churbanov, First Deputy Minister of the Interior (1980–4); he was tried, and sentenced to 12 years hard labour in December 1988. Many Western newspapers ran accounts of the proceedings; see, for example, The Times, 22 July 1988; ibid., 5 September and 6 September.
Bess Brown, “Political Developments in Soviet Central Asia”, in Political Trends, supra, note 1, at 62–74, gives a succinct account of the restructuring process that took place in the late 1980s.
M. Kaser and S. Mehrotra, The Central Asian Economics after Independence, Post-Soviet Business Forum, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1992, gives a good survey of the current situation. See also the annual International Monetary Fund reports on the individual republics.
Presidents Karimov and Akayev took their respective oaths of office on the Republic’s Constitution as well as a copy of the Quran: L’Express, 27 March 1992; Kyrgyzstan Chronicle, 21 December 1993, p. 4.
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Akiner, S. (1996). Ethnicity, Nationality and Citizenship as Expressions of Self-Determination in Central Asia. In: Clark, D., Williamson, R. (eds) Self-Determination. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24918-3_14
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